Put simply, 3500 subscribers joined Nettime in the first 10 years of its existence, and it took 10 years for another 1000 subscribers to join them.
Though this is only subscriptions. Not everyone post to the list. So what about the actual number of messages over time?
+figure 00: Total number of messages on Nettime
+What we colloquially call a "cohort" resembles, to some degree, the notion of subscription rate, which ultimately speaks to the idea of Nettime's "newcomers". Though rather than consisting of the sheer amount of subscriptions over time (data which is not available from the archive), we consider when a message first appeared on the list given an email address provenance. The graph of figure 0 displays the sum of these "first message" instances per month (50 months quintiles). A spike in the graph could be read as the formation of a new cohort, that is, an increase in the activity of newcomers, which may signify, albeit hypothetically, that an aggregate of common interest is broth forth on the list. Nettime's Nettimes so to speak.
+Theres are observable spikes that appear here and there through out the months and years in figure 0, however, these are short lived (max 6 months). What is more striking is the sustained activity that occurred in first two quintiles of the graph (1996-2004). This activity can be correlated with the high subscription rate described earlier. Though, unlike subscriptions, the amount of "first messages" peaked around the year 2000, rather than between 2001-2002 (66 subscriptions/month). Let us call this peak the 2000 cohort.
+After 2004, the number of first messages declines. As noted below, this can be attributed to the creation of nettime-ann in 2005, which rerouted announcement-type activity out off nettime-l. Nonetheless, it can be argued that, in considering the low subscription rate in the interval 2005-2011 (6 subscriptions/month), the barely noticeable peaks of 2008 and 2011 are significant. Thus Nettime may harbor more than a single 2000 cohort, 2008 and 2011 being the other two though remarkably less momentous than the first one.
+
figure 0: Total number of messages on Nettime
From the graph above, it is clear that, as with the subscription rates, the list was most active in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. It diminished considerably in 2004 and plateaued (more or less) until 2010, then increased in 2011 and decreased again the last 5 years.
+The graph above illustrates the total amount of messages that have been posted on Nettime over two decades. It is clear that, as with the subscription rates and the cohorts, the list was most active in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. It diminished considerably in 2004 and plateaued (more or less) until 2010, then increased in 2011 and decreased again the last 5 years.
In our conversations with Geert Lovink, we derived a few observations on the data at hand, mainly that:
- The fact that the list became moderated in 1999 did not prevent its activity to grow considerably or at least sustain its level of activity in the subsequent years. @@ -145,7 +152,7 @@ table 0: Nettime's subscriptions digest
- The spikes in 2008/2009 may be explained by the global economical context.
- The spike in 2011 may be explained by the political uprisings in the middle-east.
But are Nettime's heydays only part of the first decade of its existence, its activity slowly declining since then, or is the list itself becoming something else than it may have been back then?
+Was Nettime's heyday only part of the first decade of its existence? Judged solely in terms of sheer amount of postings to the list (activity), it clearly can be seen to have diminished. However, in what follows, we propose different schemata, measuring the amount of dialog on the list (vigour) as well categorizing that dialog by the most prolific contributors (outspokeness).
Vigour
A mailing list certainly lay itself to announcements-type messages where a single message is posted to the list while no one does and/or is expected to reply. Yet, more importantly, what mailing lists also allow is to produce 'threads' which are formed around a varying amount of replies to an initial message. These threads form the basis of an asynchronous 'dialog' so to speak. As introduce in the previous section, we came up with the term 'vigour' to account for this practice of replying to messages, which, in turn, create 'dialogical' dynamics between some of the list's members.
Our study surveys Nettime's vigour by analyzing the 'who' and 'when' of the list's thread formation. What follows is an overall (initial) measure of this vigour over time.
@@ -616,7 +623,7 @@ Ratio Replies per Thread table 1: Nettime list's components (message, threads, replies) year by year -It is worth noting and explaining here the nomenclature/taxonomy used in the survey. First, the survey differentiates between what is called a 'message' and a 'thread', a message being anything that is posted on the list while a thread is a message that has at least one reply (a type of message that initiates a 'dialog'/thread). Thus, every thread is a message but not all messages are threads. Second, the survey differentiates between what is dubbed a 'reply' and a thread. A reply is typically a reply to a thread, or, differently put, it is a reply to a message that makes this initial message a thread. Thus reply and thread are closely connected yet different. Needless to say that, as for the case of a thread, a reply is a message but not all messages are replies. Finally, there is single messages, ones that are neither threads or replies. The following chart is a breakdown of figure 1, following this 'message-thread-reply' taxonomy.
+It is worth noting and explaining here the nomenclature/taxonomy used in the survey. First, the survey differentiates between what is called a 'message' and a 'thread', a message being anything that is posted on the list while a thread is a message that has at least one reply (a type of message that initiates a 'dialog'/thread). Every thread is a message but not all messages are threads. Second, the survey differentiates between what is dubbed a 'reply' and a thread. A reply is typically a reply to a thread, or, differently put, it is a reply to a message that makes this initial message a thread. Thus reply and thread are closely connected yet different. Needless to say that, as for the case of a thread, a reply is a message but not all messages are replies. Finally, there is single messages, ones that are neither threads or replies. The following chart is a breakdown of figure 1, following this 'message-thread-reply' taxonomy.
figure 1: Total number of (1) single messages, (2) threads and (3) replies to threads
@@ -3703,16 +3710,16 @@ patrice{at}xs4all.nlAlso, consistent with the ‘90’s-era origins of the Nettime list, our survey aesthetically resembles a web 1.0 report and does not allow for much interaction (static page). This was deliberate ;-)
+Also, consistent with the ‘90s’-era origins of Nettime, our survey aesthetically resembles a web 1.0 report and does not allow for much interaction (static html page). This was deliberate ;-)
Further Research
To our mind the content of the posts and conversations in Nettime is, in fact, what makes this list of particular interest from the perspective of new media studies. Our survey is, of course, limited in scope and could have featured a much deeper (and perhaps more scientific) analysis of the list. To this end, here are a couple of points that may be worked on:
-
-
It seems that a thorough time analysis of the list would prompt interesting question has to do with periodizing the ‘eras’ or ‘times of Nettime’, in terms of who were the main contributing figures in different periods and how might they have clustered into specific cohorts.
-Performing a discourse analysis on the content of the messages may also shed light into Nettime's periods. For instance, we know that media-arts-centered debates took place on the list at different times. Would it be possible to periodises these instances and compare their advent, for example, with the more activist-type dialogs that seemed the pervade the list in all epochs?
+It seems that a thorough time analysis of the list would prompt interesting question having to do with periodizing the ‘eras’ or ‘times of Nettime’, in terms of who were the main contributing figures in different periods and how might they have clustered into specific cohorts. However, given the fact that subscriptions dramatically diminished in the last decade, the vigourous times of Nettime may not signify the emergence of new cohorts (with perhaps different discourses) so much as changing dynamics within an existing one.
+Performing a discourse analysis on the content of the messages may also shed light into Nettime's periods. For instance, we know that media-arts-centered debates took place on the list at different times (we are very interested on these). Would it be possible to periodise these instances and compare their advent, for example, with the more activist-type dialogs that seem the pervade the list in all epochs?
Dialogical clusters may be extracted and analysed to foreground the possible various 'cliques' that may, by habit, form depending on the subject at hand. Coupling this type of analysis with the previous discourse analysis could potentially produce an interesting index of the list.
Nettime Surveyors
-David Gauthier, Marc Tuters and Geert Lovink
+David Gauthier and Marc Tuters. Special thanks to Geert Lovink for is insights.